


1904

by Black_Betty



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Historical, Canon Disabled Character, Edwardian Period, M/M, Magic, Magician AU, Theatre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 01:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2794745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Betty/pseuds/Black_Betty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the accident, Charles had been fascinated with Magneto and his apparently awe-inspiring feats. </p><p>After the accident he became fixated on him, obsessed with finding out if the man was a reality or a well-executed showman with a masterful understanding of mechanics and illusion. </p><p>When the opportunity arose to see his show in person during his celebrated first world tour, Charles found he could not resist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1904

**Author's Note:**

> Moving this over from Tumblr with a few parts reworked and edited :)
> 
> Originally posted with an accompanying photoset here:
> 
> http://black--betty.tumblr.com/post/104405397235/this-is-an-idea-thats-been-haunting-me-recently

 

Charles has not been outside in three months.

The world is bigger now and more suffocating than he remembers. There had been a time when the green glow of gaslights and the crush of humanity on cobblestone streets had heralded a good night, but not now. Now he only feels a fluttering bird of panic trapped low in his chest as he peers out of window of the hackney.

How quickly a bright, beautiful world can slip into a cold and lonely darkness.

Charles hadn’t realized how small his universe could become. He has troubles now he couldn’t even have imagined when he was the darling of English society, floating from glittering parties to warm and waiting beds across London in a haze of expensive alcohol. He shouldn’t give a damn about what anyone might think of him now, not when they all abandoned him, but he can’t help the jolt of panic in his chest when the hackney arrives at the Hippodrome and he sees the wave of spectators making their way inside. Suddenly he feels very much on display, though Logan and Armando lift him out of the carriage and into his chair in the same smooth maneuver he had made them practice twice before they set out for the evening.

He can feel eyes on him as he situates himself in his chair, tugging his gloves up tight against his wrists and straightening his waistcoat. It’s hard to ignore the pointed looks in his direction, the smothered whispers behind gloved hands. Harder still to ignore the rush of thought centered on him, shooting toward him like a volley of arrows that embed themselves deep within his chest. Before he can gather himself together and raise his shattered shields, he is aware of a sickening variety of perverse curiosity and pity, and the kind of disgust and discomfort that comes when people are forced to face a sharp dose of reality. 

_How dare he come here—That poor man, he used to be so beautiful—I would kill myself if it were me—people like that should be locked away—_

Before he can be swept away by the torrent of thought, Raven tumbles out of the carriage next to him with significantly less grace and is at his side with a subtle hand on his shoulder.

“Everything alright?” She asks, her expression set and determined, her mind echoing the same steel. He knows she will be angry if he gives up now and turns back, and so he swallows and shores up his defences, allows her hand and her familiar mind to anchor him firmly to the ground.

“Fine,” he replies and begins wheeling himself toward the bright lights of the performance hall, allowing the frivolity and chatter of the crowd to wash over him. He keeps his mind tightly spooled, especially when the valets step forward once more to carry his cumbersome chair slowly up the shallow steps to the grand entryway.

The Hippodrome feels novel though Charles had been at the inaugural opening only two years prior. He’s still struck by the grandeur of the building, the high ceilings and dazzling lights, the gleaming wood of the stage thrusting out into the audience. Of course, on his first visit he had been sitting in one of the boxes overhanging the stage, drunk with champagne and hollering down at the circus act with his arms around two or three of his most recent conquests. Now he is sitting off to the side, wedged in between the wall and the front row of velvet seats, the stairs leading up to the private boxes too narrow for his chair. He feels frayed and vulnerable sitting out in the open, his chair on display and face exposed. Feels as though there is a gaping wound carved into his chest, open and evident for everyone to examine with disgust.

He realizes logically that the attention of the audience is focused on the heavy velvet curtains obscuring the stage from view. He can feel their minds roiling with excitement and a buzzing fervour, a wave of energy that fills him up with second hand anticipation. And even now, flayed and exposed and longing for home, he can’t help but feel that same excitement echoing genuinely within his own mind.

“I can’t believe we’re here,” Raven says. Her face when he glances over at her is bright with breathless delight. “I can’t believe he’s here, just behind that curtain.”

Charles is a man of science, of reason. He shouldn’t feel giddy at the prospect of a magic show. And yet, when he smiles at his sister and says, “I know,” he feels nothing but the same eagerness radiating from her skin as she clutches his hand.

The mysterious “Magneto” had emerged from Germany with his act of illusions around the same time Charles entered Oxford to study genetics and biology, trying to determine what it was that made him and Raven so special, so different from everyone else. In all his years and throughout all his research he has only ever discovered three other people like himself, people with special gifts, or abilities. First was Raven, wandering into his life he was only a child and afraid he was going mad, nightmares of Bedlam painted inside his mind by his vicious stepbrother and the wandering opium laced thoughts of his own mother. Raven had confirmed his sanity; Logan and most recently Armando had confirmed his hypothesis of a new emerging species of humans. Darwin’s theory of evolution, applied to his own life.

Before the accident, Charles had been fascinated with Magneto and his apparently awe-inspiring feats. After the accident he became fixated on him, obsessed with finding out if the man was a reality or a well-executed showman with a masterful understanding of mechanics and illusion. When the opportunity arose to see his show in person during his celebrated first world tour, Charles found he could not resist.

The lights dim, a hush slipping over the crowd like a thick blanket. All eyes are riveted to the stage, voices melting away in the darkness, through for Charles, thousands of minds still burn like bonfires across the packed gallery, honed in and fixated on the stubbornly closed curtains before them.

There is movement at center stage. Charles’ attention is captivated by two white-gloved hands that creep through the divide and part the curtains slowly. A woman steps through, pale and beautiful and glimmering, wearing nothing but a bodice of diamonds, her hair adorned with ropes of pearl and tall white feathers. She is so bright against the shadows of the Hippodrome and the red velvet behind her that she is nearly blinding as she spreads her arms to address the crowd.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” her voice, incongruously American, echoes to all four corners of the massive room. At the forefront of his brain he feels something stirring, like the delicate wings of a butterfly against his temples. “What you are about to witness may strain the limits of your comprehension. We offer you tonight, not tricks or illusions, but true magic—something beyond the realm of our human understanding. I present to you the mysterious wonders of… _Magneto_.”

She gestures an elegant hand and the curtains open obediently behind her. When she bows, the footlights ignite and cast a golden glow over the stage as the curtains slide silently into the wings. Behind them there is nothing but the deep shadows of the stage and a man standing motionless atop a tall black box, his face a pale moon carved out of candlelit shadows.

Charles recognizes him from the posters and the odd clipping he managed to scavenge from German newspapers shipped in from abroad. In person Magneto is a striking man. The faded black and white of newsprint had not done him justice, and his face when he tilts it toward the light is enough to make the crowd draw in a collective breath.

He towers above them dressed in a sharp black tuxedo, a dark burgundy cape flowing over his shoulders and pooling by his feet. The box is narrow and nearly 15 feet tall, but he stands and observes them calmly with not a hint of fear or nerves in the sharp line of his body.

Slowly he lifts his arms, reaching out on either side as though embracing the entire room, and then, without warning, walks smoothly off the top of the box. There are shouts of surprise from the audience, but he doesn’t fall. Instead he lingers in the air as though pinned there by the hand of god, floating incredibly and effortlessly high above the stage. He smiles and stretches out his fingers, slowly glides toward the awestruck audience like a puppet lifted on invisible strings.

The crowd gasps and applauds enthusiastically but Charles refuses to be so quickly won over. Easily done, he thinks skeptically, remembering a production of The Tempest where the actor playing Ariel seemingly soared above the crowd on translucent fairy wings. Though the thought fills him with dread, he reminds himself again that this man has the potential to be nothing more than a fraud.

And yet, as the night wears on, Charles finds it harder and harder to disprove the miraculous spectacle laid before him by Magneto and his assistant, the appropriately named White Queen. Finds it harder and harder to maintain his skepticism, his sense of reason. He watches as Magneto spins silver daggers in glistening arcs high above his head before embedding them one at a time alongside the White Queen’s head, close enough to move her hair but never once cutting her perfect skin. Or when he describes the exact shape and size of a pocket watch, reciting the engraving on the back of it before drawing it from a man’s pocket at the very back of the top balcony and flying it over the crowd into his outstretched hand. He reads minds with strange and surprising accuracy and turns lumps of shapeless metal into delicately wrought butterflies that flutter out into the audience and burst into a glittering fall of confetti. He is hypnotizing and perplexing, and Charles finds himself riveted, unable to look away from the long, graceful lines of his body, or the clear grey eyes set in a handsome and unfathomable face.

Though Charles is torn between fragile hope and an ingrained stubborn cynicism, the rest of the crowd is eating out of the palm of Magneto’s hand by the time he announces his most famous trick:  _The Drowning Man_. As the stagehands wheel out an enormous tank full to the brim with water, the room fills with the sound of anxious murmuring, people bending this way and that to better see the stage.

The White Queen wraps Magneto in rope after rope of heavy chain, shackling his hands and feet together with polished manacles as a long, heavy cable lowers ominously from the ceiling. She slips a blindfold over his eyes and carefully clips his bound hands to the cable, standing back as it slowly retracts. Charles watches uneasily as Magneto’s hands are stretched above his head, his body elongating and toes pointing until he’s eventually pulled off his feet. Up and up he goes, stopping finally to dangle above the tank. For a long, lingering moment he hangs there, the entire room breathless, gasping when the cable detaches and Magneto plunges into the water.  

Charles feels a sudden spike of anxiety rocketing from his brain down to the center of his chest. It takes him a moment to realize it doesn’t belong to him. He tentatively unfurls his telepathy, aware that he is at risk of being swept away in a room crushed full of so many active minds, but the general emotion of the surrounding crowd is one of excitement and anticipation. Pushing a little farther, he is drawn to the churning commotion of a beautiful, unfamiliar mind trapped in a tide of panicked thoughts of suffocation and drowning. When Charles sends a pulse of soothing calm the mind heaves a sigh and strangely, the thoughts become fixated on a slow count, currently at eleven.

Suddenly the mind lights up in a breathtaking burst of colour across Charles consciousness. At the same moment the chains begin to drop from Magneto’s body one by one and Charles can feel the metal, the cold and solid heart of it, the dimensions of each link and lock and key. Dizzyingly, he realizes whose mind he’s in.  

He pulls out immediately, rattled, and his mind does not settle until Magneto surfaces in the tank, free of chains and raising triumphant hands toward the crowd.

He spools his mind close as the show goes on, stage hands changing out the tank for the tall black box from the beginning of the act, Magneto leaving and returning swiftly in a dry clothes. Charles watches as he smiles at the audience, bowing in recognition of their thunderous applause, and hesitantly reaches out toward his mind again.

This time, however, he meets resistance, as though there is a wall of iron fortifying the man’s thoughts. Astounded, he prods at it gently to see if it will hold and is met with a sharp spike of ice against his temples. He winces and pulls out.

When he returns his attention to the stage he notices the White Queen looking over at him with interest. Charles is so stunned when their eyes make contact that he doesn’t realize Magneto is calling for an audience volunteer until the White Queen is striding across the stage and pointing towards him.

The sudden force and focus of 4000 minds bending toward him is nearly enough to make him pass out, manifesting a panic so visceral his eyesight goes black. He reels and tries to pull his mind back together, his heart beating itself bloody against his ribs, but he refuses to let any fear reveal itself, not when all eyes are on him like some kind of surreal nightmare. He clings to Raven's hand, pushes air through his lungs and as his vision clears the first person he sees is Magneto, standing over him and watching him closely. He is painfully aware of his chair, his unfeeling legs, and inability to escape unscathed though he wants nothing more than to peel himself out from under the curious gaze of the man on stage, the less courteous attention of those sitting around him.

He shouts, “How do you propose I join you on stage my dear?”, falling back on his only weapon--charm--amidst the unsettled murmuring of the audience. He gestures at his chair, “I can’t say stairs are my strongest suit.”

There is laughter amidst the crowd and Charles feels a twist of derision in his stomach.

It’s Magneto who answers him, raising his voice above the laughter.

“With your permission, Lord Xavier, I can ensure you will have no need of stairs.” Charles feels himself flush as those who are sitting too far away to recognize his face suddenly light up with recognition at his title.

He’s abruptly furious, knowing that there is no way out of this but to concede and participate, the thought of saying no and slowly wheeling himself toward the exit with the eyes of the entire auditorium on him making him feel nearly suicidal with mortification. The fury lights a contrary fire in his chest, and before his mind can stop it, his mouth is saying,

"Alright. Go ahead."

Magneto smiles and without looking away from Charles waves one elegant hand, drawing forward the chains and manacles he had used only moments before to bind himself. He unclasps his cape and rests it over the metal, closing his eyes in meditative thought before lifting the red cloth in a dramatic swirl and revealing a smooth, flat surface. As the audience applauds, Magneto slides the metal toward the edge of the stage and over the side. A ramp.  A shining pathway that lands directly at Charles' feet and reflects the footlights like a mirror. 

Raven squeezes his hand encouragingly and then there is nothing left to do but wheel himself slowly upwards, focusing more on the way the metal seemed to vibrate beneath him, alive, than the way thousands of minds are examining him with close scrutiny.

Despite himself, his face is burning when he arrives on stage just as Magneto refastens his cloak. He attempts a charming smile toward the audience.

“Had I known you were going to make me into one of your spectacles,” Charles murmurs to Magneto as he wheels himself toward the black box at his gesture, “I might not have agreed so readily.”

“Something tells me, Lord Xavier, that there is more to you than mere spectacle.”

Startled at the strangely intimate tone, Charles looks up but Magneto is already turning away, projecting his voice out to the audience.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, for my last illusion, I am going to make our gracious volunteer…disappear.”

A ripple of excited whispering breaks out from the audience as Magneto turns back to Charles.

“After you?” he asks, one hand outstretched toward the giant black box. When Charles turns the White Queen is already there, opening a door sealed almost invisibly to the front with a flourish. Inside the box is pitch black, seemingly without dimensions, the kind of black that seems to swim before your eyes, alive. For one silly, childish moment Charles wants to refuse, wants to put his hands stubbornly on his wheels and shake his head no. The White Queen smiles at him as if she knows exactly what he’s thinking and the mocking challenge in her elegantly raised eyebrow is enough to make Charles grit his teeth and push forward.

He hesitantly backs himself into the box, still clumsy in maneuvering his heavy chair and breathes a sigh of relief when he makes it in without incident. Magneto is still orating to the audience, explaining that the box is solid on all sides with a firm knock against the wood, but before the door closes he leans in close and whispers,

“Hold on tight, Xavier.”

The door slides shut, sealing out prying eyes of 4000 curious spectators. That in itself is a relief, but soon he is left with nothing but the sound of his own breathing, and impenetrably black walls on all sides.

For a long pause nothing happens, and just when Charles is beginning to feel insufferably claustrophobic and certain that the trick has failed, the solid bottom of the box seems to shift and give way. Heart bursting from his throat, he clutches onto the arms of his chair, eyes straining to see what’s below. Beneath his wheels the floor is moving, is slithering like serpents over and around the spokes of his wheels, tugging him down, down into the stage.

He feels helpless, paralyzed with fright and unable to stand, to kick his feet against the walls of the box, to even shout for help. As his chair descends his hands scrabble against the smooth wood, and then horrifyingly, grasp at nothing but air as the walls end abruptly.

Through his panic he becomes aware of a pale yellow light filtering in from below him, growing stronger as he descends.

“Lord Xavier,” a voice whispers at him through the darkness, and Charles jumps, looking around wildly. As his vision adjusts he realizes with some relief that he has descended through a trapdoor into a hidden crawlspace beneath the stage, wooden beams and shelves of props crowded in together along the low, dusty walls. Just a trick of the theatre he thinks until he sees the slithering metal working it’s way out from between the spokes of his wheels, settling him gently on the ground before swallowing back up into the black hole above his head, pulling the trap door closed as it goes.

“Come with me Sir,” the voice whispers again and this time Charles looks to the source of the words, sees a young girl with dark hair peering at him through the gloom, hunched over in deference to the low ceiling.

Charles pushes himself slowly along the narrow passageway, gloved hands scraping along the wood every so often, until the girl leads him out to a more habitable hallway, wide enough for rough looking stagehands to push past them. Standing up straight, the girl is about average height and has one incongruous stripe of white hair in the pile of dark curls gathered on her head, though she can’t be older than 16.

“Magneto was hoping you might wait for him in his dressing room.” She says, voice low and respectful. Out in the open amongst the bustle of backstage Charles feels like he can breathe again, the nightmarish panic of the box trick leaving him strangely wired. He’s shaking with anger and adrenaline but he also feels more awake than he has in a long time.

“Yes I’ll wait,” he says and follows her through a door, out of the chaos of backstage. They enter into a large, lavish room full of red velvet couches tucked in amongst low tables, their polished surfaces covered in white flowers. A panel of mirrors runs along the far wall and Charles turns away from his reflection, smiles at the girl as she offers him a cup of tea and shoves one of the heavy couches out of the way with surprising strength to make room for his chair.

Charles can hear the muffled sound of applause coming from somewhere above them, thundering through the walls and ceiling like a torrent of rain.

“Show’s over,” the girl says, handing him a cup of tea in bone white china. He smiles at her and allows the gentle scent of lemon and honey to soothe him.

“What’s your name?” he asks, taking a slow sip. “Do you work with Magneto?”

The girl sits across from him. She has huge brown eyes that look luminous in her round, pale face.

“Sort of,” she says, with a secret smile that tells him there’s a lot more to the story. “My name’s Marie.”

Before he can question her further the door to the dressing room bangs open and Magneto stalks in followed by the White Queen. Tall and imposing, arguing loudly, beautiful even with their faces glistening with sweat and feathers and starched collar drooping, they seem to take up all the air in the room. 

“If you’re not going to make it believable, then don’t do it,” the Queen is saying, aggressively peeling off her elbow length gloves and tossing them at Marie.

“It’s the one we’re most famous for Emma.” Magneto replies, slamming the door shut behind them, “it’s on the verdammten poster.”

“Yes, it’s on the poster as the d _rowning_  man. No one’s impressed if it’s just a man swimming around in a tank, no matter how good he looks in wet clothes.”

Magneto scowls at her, and Charles would feel awkward about intruding except he’s distracted by Magneto’s cape unclasping and flinging itself over one of the low couches in the centre of the room. His tuxedo jacket follows, along with his waistcoat and tie, his long fingers peeling each layer off with an angry haste that Charles can barely follow.

When his cufflinks spin and detach themselves from his shirt sleeves before drifting over to settle on the dressing table next to him, Charles plucks one from the smooth surface and examines it closely.

“So it’s real then?” He asks, turning the polished steel back and forth across his palm. “Not just an illusion?”

The arguing stops abruptly and when Charles looks up in the silence, Magneto is staring at him, his fingers frozen halfway through undoing the buttons on his shirt.

“What do you think?” Magneto asks after a pause, his tone curious.

“I think…” Truth be told, he can't think. His mind is still racing, still flooded with fear after being trapped in the box, distracted by the slip of bare skin visible between the folds of Magneto's shirt. He can't shake the knowledge that he couldn't have escaped or fought his way out of Magneto's trick even if he had wanted to. The feeling of his fingertips scraping fruitlessly along smooth wood is a nauseating scar in his mind.

His helplessness enrages him.

He carefully sets the cufflink down and folds his hands over the arms of his chair. “I think it's possible you chose me as a volunteer because of this,” he taps the chair with his palms, “Because the audience would know it’s hard to hide a man in a wheelchair, and because they know I am a real cripple who can’t sneak away.” He looks from the White Queen back to Magneto, testing their resolve. They return his gaze steadily.

“I think that's a cruel trick to play on a man, even if tricks are your stock-in-trade."

There is a long, heavy moment. Finally Magneto moves, dragging a chair around with a subtle hand gesture and sitting so that he and Charles are knee to knee. When he looks at Charles, the lines of his face are somber and serious, but his eyes are bright, a nearly translucent gray that seems to stare straight into Charles’ brain as though Magneto is the mind reader.

"It was not my intention to trick you." His accent is thick and German and makes his every word seem loaded with earnest meaning. "Though I am sorry if we caused you pain. I have waited a long time to meet you." Charles frowns at him in confusion.

"Meet me? But how--" Magneto smiles.

"I know your work, Lord Xavier," and miraculously he quotes, "Mutation. It is the key to our evolution. It is how we have evolved from a single-cell organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few millennia evolution leaps forward.”

Charles stares at him in shock. The words are from an obscure and highly reactionary paper Charles wrote during his time at Oxford concerning the results of breeding experiments done by DeVries and other Dutch botanists using Mendel’s theories of heredity. It was as close as Charles ever got to revealing his true self to the public, though he realized now it was cowardly done, couched as it was in academia and scientific jargon.

“Emma thought you might not come tonight,” Magneto continues, looking over at the white Queen who shrugs nonchalantly and disappears behind a tall wooden room divider layered over with cream silk. “But I knew you would.” He’s so emphatic, Charles can only stare at him, mesmerized. “I knew you couldn’t resist. Because you’re one of us.”

“I’m…?”

“I felt you, in my head.” Magneto grins at him with all of his gleaming white teeth, his showman’s smile. He’s painfully attractive Charles thinks, slightly dazed. He’s almost difficult to look at. “You’re more gentle than Emma, warmer.” His smile softens. “You told me to breathe.”

“And Emma…?” Charles glances over at the screen to see Emma reappear in a white robe and dump her glittering corset into Marie’s waiting arms.

“Can do the same things you can sugar,” her lips curl coyly, “and then some.” She holds out one hand and Charles watches in astonishment as her flesh turns from pale peach to diamond, the candlelight refracting off her body and onto the wall in a rainbow of incandescent colour.

“So what do you think now?” Magneto asks—no Erik. His name is Erik, he’s practically shouting it into Charles’ brain.

What does he think? He thinks that when he wrote that paper at Oxford, he never dreamed that a man in Germany with a miraculous gift would read his words and come to find him. He also thinks that this might be more than he can comprehend or cope with presently. He thinks that Raven is going to be ecstatic and smug, and that Logan is probably going to hate Emma, and that Erik is beautiful and viscerally real, sitting before him close enough to touch. He takes a breath and smiles, genuinely smiles for the first time since he woke up with a broken body and a broken heart.

“I think I need a drink,” he says.

 


End file.
